Upgrade dilemma

thumper

thumper

thumper

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Joined
2 Feb 2003
Posts
379
Location
UK
Ok guys so i've got ~£200 to spend on an upgrade
I currently run the following spec:

- DFI Lanparty NF4 - SLI-D
- S939 Venice 3000+ - running at 2.6ghz
- 1Gb (4 x 256mb) BH5 DDR
- ATI 1800XL 256mb - clocked to near 1800XT speeds
- Jeantech Arctic 600w PSU
- Dell 2405fpw (important as I'd like to play games at 1920x1200)

rather than ask what should i buy I've narrowed my options to 3 bundles (at least i think i have) - therefore I'd like to know which of the three following upgrades you think i'd see the greatest performance increase out of in games:

Option 1:
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - £108.09
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - £93.99
Total inc P&P: £211

Option 2:
Intel Core 2 DUO E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - £112.79
ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA PT880 Ultra Socket 775 SATA 8 channel audio ATX - ~£40
Corsair 1GB DDR2 XMS2-5400C4 TwinX (2x512MB) - £51.69 (required as asrock board only 2 ddr & 2 ddr2 slots & my DDR is 4x256mb)
Total inc P&P: ~£215

Option 3:
OcUK GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - £192.69


thanks for looking
any advice is much appreciated :)
 
8800gts, there are games that are cpu limited, but those would mainly be things like supreme commander, looks like cnc3 will run easily on anything semi recent. memory wise you're lacking a little.

upgrade in cpu will not make a 256mb card playable in a lot of games at 1920x1200, a 8800gts will. some games(few) will want some juice, but the only game i think really REALLY wants more juice than you have is supreme commander. if thats the only game you'll play possibly change the choice but unlikely.

theres only one thing to consider, what does your computer struggle with now, if you look on a site that sells games are any game coming out you want before end of march/early april? r600 stuff at worst will drop prices on the 8800gts's of both flavours. at best there will be a better card for same money.

you could really do with some memory though, there aren't that many games that really do need more than 1gb, i was just playing bf2142 demo, to check it out, and it was using a little over a gig, bf2 did aswell. very few other games need it for now.


get a 8800gts now, when you can afford it get any cheap board, cheapest dual core c2d and cheapest 2gig set of memory you can get. but board/cpu/mem is definately a future upgrade.

EDIT:-, forgot to mention, really try and find a cheap 640mb version because at 1920x1200, you can still run some decent levels of aa/af, but the lack of memory can leave the card trailing in speed to the x1900xt's with 256mb mem. seems ati use memory much more effectively, z-compression stuff i guess really working well. at lower res the 320mb isn't so crippling, but at 1920x1200 it can be a killer, and future games are likely to get mroe memory intensive.
 
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thanks for your reply :)
In terms of what i play that struggles - I've not been in the PC scene for 6-9 months since buying a 360 - at that time HL2 / far cry / fear all ran fine - now things like COH / armed assault / medieval tw 2 all struggle.
based on what you say i might try to hold off till the new ATI cards come out - that way i will hopefully be able to get a 640mb or equivalent card and perhaps another gig of ram ....
is everyone in agreement with drunkenmaster?
 
I agree with drunkenmaster, that would probably be the best option but it all depends on when you would be upgrading the other items such as CPU, memory etc because that card would probably bottleneck under those current system components. You would experience a good performance increase but with the better CPU and more memory the system would be able to handle almost anything thrown at it. Games are becoming much more demanding and 2GB is becoming a necessity!
 
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